DeSantis is a master of distraction. When is Florida’s governor actually going to govern? | Opinion

It’s Disney all over again.

This time, Gov. Ron DeSantis apparently got angry at the College Board for daring to call out the state Department of Education’s “slander” when it said an Advanced Placement course on African-American studies didn’t have “educational value.” Now the governor is making barely veiled threats to get rid of AP courses in Florida altogether, with students most likely to pay the price for his latest concocted controversy.

Last year, it was Disney. DeSantis went after the company’s special taxing district after The Mouse had the temerity to push back against the governor’s “Don’t say gay” bill. That special taxing district? It now falls under DeSantis’ control, after the Legislature did his bidding.

If you like DeSantis as a leader, you’re probably happy with his most recent strongman imitation. If you despise him, you’re probably seeing red. In either case, you’re doing exactly what he wants. You’re distracted from thinking about all the stuff he’s not doing — like, say, governing.

DeSantis, like Donald Trump before him, is practicing the dark art of manipulating our attention, throwing bombs to keep us riveted, even as other, far less sexy state problems remain unfixed, like property insurance.

Ka-pow! He’s fighting against COVID shutdowns (conveniently forgetting that he did, in fact, shut down the state before whipping around and declaring us the “Free State of Florida.”) Ka-boom! He’s going after what’s being taught in elementary schools and high schools — and, now, colleges — because that’ll send parents into a frenzy. Blam! He’s raising the specter of book banning and drumming up fears of something he ominously called the “bio-medical security state.”

Too much spin

One minute he’s making it seem as though there’s a serious problem of children regularly attending drag shows (there isn’t) and the next he’s using our money to jet migrants from states (not his) to other states (again, not his) in a ridiculous overreach that generated a new round of headlines. It’s a wonder he doesn’t have motion sickness, he’s spinning so fast.

He’s a Harvard-trained lawyer, but he’s getting legislation passed that is bound to be challenged in court, while we pay for it all. Either way, it’s a win for him. If he prevails in court, great. If he loses, he still wins because he gets attention — a lot of it national, to boot.

It’s a cynical calculation, that win-win. It relies on the mind-set that everything we’re talking about — the Legislature, the governorship, the expected run for the presidency — is a game. But it’s not. There are real victims of DeSantis’ politics. Your heart may not bleed for Disney, but this time around, it’s students who will suffer if the governor does indeed take AP classes away.

Students count on those classes to help them get into college and to save them money by obtaining college credit while they’re still in high school. Students also count on taking the SAT test administered by the College Board. Yes, there are some alternatives for the advanced classes and standardized tests — taking the ACT instead of the SAT, for example — but they aren’t the same. Plus, some students like to take both tests to see how they fare.

There’s another point to consider as well: Standardized tests and advanced classes can be effective ways for less-advantaged students to distinguish themselves — even if they didn’t take lessons in Mandarin and violin from the time they were toddlers.

As Eli Rhoads, a senior at Pasco County’s Mitchell High School, said to the Herald/Times Tallahassee Bureau about AP classes: “I don’t see how I could have gotten ahead without them. You almost have to have these courses to stand out.” AP courses helped him get a full scholarship to the University of Alabama, he said.

Both the SAT and the ACT should be available in Florida, and so should AP classes. Pulling those possibilities out from under students is cruel, especially if the only reason is to make a political point on your way to the Republican nomination.

That brings us back to our main point: By giving so much light and air to DeSantis’ political gyrations, we let him draw attention from the many things he’s not doing. We let him control the narrative, making it one of fear and anger rather than actual policy discussions. There are real, festering problems in Florida that could benefit from the attention of our leaders, including him.

What really matters

Things like the insane costs of insurance in Florida, which, last we checked, was still a miserable burden on property owners. Or the regular people’s increasing inability to afford houses or rents. Or the Legislature’s continuing refusal to help lower-income people by expanding Medicaid, even though the feds would pick up 90% of the bill.

They may not have the same ring as “where woke goes to die,” but they are serious, bread-and-butter issues for Floridians, and they are getting worse. And the culture wars that DeSantis specializes in don’t do a thing to address them.

As voters and citizens, we don’t have to let DeSantis be the puppet-master. We don’t have to play the role of an obedient rehearsal audience for his glorious presidential bid. We have the right to expect our governor to actually pay attention to policy and try to help all of us. We have the right, in short, to expect that our governor actually do his job: govern.